Dr. John Michael Crichton (born October 23, 1942) is an author and producer. His best-known works are science fiction: novels, films and television programs. His genre can be best described as techno-thriller which is usually the marriage of action and technical details. Many of his novels have medical or scientific underpinnings, reflecting his medical training and science background.
Biography
Crichton was raised in Roslyn, Long Island, USA, and attended Harvard University, where he graduated summa cum laude in anthropology. He went on to teach anthropology at Cambridge in England, later returning to Massachusetts to gain an M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School.
While in medical school, he wrote novels under the pen names John Lange and Jeffrey Hudson (under which pseudonym A Case of Need won the 1969 Edgar Award). He also co-authored Dealing with his younger brother Douglas Crichton under a shared pen name Michael Douglas. The back cover of that book contains a picture of Michael and Douglas at a very young age taken by their mother.
His two pen names were both created to reflect his above-average height. According to his own words, he was about 206 cm (6′9") tall in 1997 [1]. "Lange" (adverb) means "for a long time" in German and Sir Jeffrey Hudson was a famous seventeenth century dwarf in Queen Henrietta Maria’s court.
Noteworthy works
His best known novels include The Andromeda Strain (1969), which deals with a mysterious extraterrestrial virus-like pathogen, and Jurassic Park (1990), which postulates a world in which cloning can bring the dinosaurs back to life.
Other notable novels include Prey (2002), in which a swarm of nano-robots run out of control; Congo, about the search for semiconductor-grade industrial diamonds and a new breed of gorillas; Timeline, which deals with space-time travel and the 14th century; and State of Fear, which deals with eco-terrorism.
One prominent theme of his work is that of irresponsible or misguided scientific achievement. Scientists or technicians who discover a marvelous but dangerous thing are not always to blame. It’s the system that lets one to acquire power that causes problems.